“‘I don’t think there’s a problem right now,’ said actor, producer and director Jules Jordan. ‘It’s like people who do stunts in Hollywood. There’s a risk in anything you do.’ Jordan said he does not use condoms in filming because ‘it takes away the whole fantasy.’ . . .
Adult film stars and producers . . . said they continue to believe the porn industry’s testing guidelines are enough to keep performers safe despite this week’s news that an adult film actress had tested positive for HIV” (Kimi Yoshino & Rong-Gong Lin II, “Porn stars at L.A. convention defend HIV tests”, Los Angeles Times, 13 June)
“The United States adult film industry produces 4,000–11,000 films and earns an estimated $9– $13 billion in gross revenues annually [1]. An estimated 200 production companies employ 1,200–1,500 performers [2]. Performers typically earn $400–$1,000 per shoot and are not compensated based on distribution or sales” (Grudzen & Kerndt, “The Adult Film Industry: Time to Regulate?” PLoS Medicine 4 #6 [2007] e126 0993-6).
The very question of what caused that film actress to test positive seems entirely open:
“Officials at the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation . . . have issued conflicting statements about when the woman’s first positive test was known, citing both June 4 and June 6. . . . What is clear is that the woman worked June 5 despite having last tested negative for HIV on April 29 . . . . she has since gotten multiple positive test results. The woman had two recent sex partners, her boyfriend and a male performer she worked with June 5. The men have tested HIV negative so far. . . . Los Angeles County officials . . . . said it would be the 22nd HIV infection in an adult industry performer since 2004. Five were detected in the outbreak five years ago that shut down production for a month. In all, health officials said 16 of the 22 are men, including 10 who were identified as having sex with other men, and six, including the most recent, are women. Given the size of the industry ‘it is pretty remarkable and a testament to the testing procedures in place’ that so few people have tested positive for HIV, said Steven Hirsch, co-founder of Vivid Entertainment, one of the largest producers of heterosexual adult films. . . . Vivid [is] a condom-optional company . . . .
But public health officials caution that the testing protocol does not adequately protect against transmission of diseases. The male porn star at the center of the 2004 outbreak, for example, had tested negative for HIV just days before working and spreading the virus to three female performers.”
Among the estimated 200 production companies, “Jessica Drake, an actress for Wicked Entertainment, . . . . works for the industry’s only heterosexual condom-mandatory production company.”
So: In 2009 a female porn actress tests positive after sex with two men who are both “HIV”-negative. In 2004, an “HIV”-negative male porn star had supposedly infected 3 females.
Over a period of 5 years, during which 20,000-55,000 films were made by 1200-1500 performers, with condoms “optional” or explicitly not used in 199 out of 200 production companies, a total of 22 positive “HIV” tests were recorded. It seems that transmitting “HIV-positive” status is a very rare occurrence when heterosexual intercourse (not only vaginal, moreover) is unprotected, at least in the adult film industry: “the vast majority of heterosexual porn movies are shot ‘bareback,’ an industry term for unprotected sex” .
In the 2004 incident, a male porn star was supposed to have infected 3 female actors, whose first- and second-generation sexual partners were tested subsequently with none found to be “HIV-positive” (Morbidity & Mortality Weekly Report, 54 #37 [2005] 923-4).
“HIV” testing is done for the porn industry by PCR, because it can supposedly detect “infection” a couple of weeks earlier than antibody tests can; and because it is more sensitive, and therefore also used for screening blood. At the same time, it is less specific and approved only for screening and not for diagnosis (MMWR above).
Testing “HIV-positive” can come after flu vaccination, anti-tetanus shot, pregnancy, tuberculosis, surgery, and because of dozens of other “cross-reactions”.
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Pretend you are an alien visiting this planet. Would you ascribe to sexual transmission, sometimes from “HIV”-negative partners, those 4.4 cases per year of “HIV-positive” in the porn industry, or would you ascribe them to cross-reactions and coincidences?
Again as an alien, how would you rate the rationality of the beings who interpret these numbers as sexual transmission during the speculated period of a few weeks during which a person may be infected but not “HIV-positive”? From the “HIV”-negative individuals who had evidently caught that “infection” somewhere other than in the work-place, even though the overwhelming amount of intercourse by porn-performers occurs in that work-place?
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Camp followers of the HIV/AIDS dogma, of course, speak in absolutist terms and with scant regard for probabilities or evidence. Thus “a spokesman for the state [CA] Division of Occupational Safety and Health” complained that the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation “has never been cooperative with us and our investigations; . . . .’You’d think they’d want to be a full partner in trying to prevent the spread of this disease,’ said Dr. Jonathan Fielding, health officer for Los Angeles County. . . . ‘This industry screams for regulation,’ said Michael Weinstein, president of the Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation. ‘Cal-OSHA needs to require that condoms be used in any film. Yesterday.’”
They are worried so frantic because “With some of the nation’s largest pornography producers based in the Valley, any disease has the potential to spread quickly”.
Yet the clear fact of the matter is that “HIV” has not spread, let alone quickly, in this very “high-risk” group. The surveillance is unmatched anywhere else. Performers have to be tested every 30 days by the same sensitive (and thereby not-very-specific) test as is used for blood donations. A total of 22 positive tests have been reported in 5 years among 1200-1500 people tested 12 times a year, thus about 72,000-90,000 tests. Since the number of films made was between 20,000 and 55,000, one may infer reasonably that the number of acts of intercourse will have been of that same order of magnitude, so also comparable to the number of tests. So in a high-risk group that predominantly practices unsafe sex, and where the “potential to spread rapidly” is great, the observed rate of testing “HIV-positive” is maybe something like 5 in 10,000, certainly well under 1 per 1000.
No wonder that the people most directly involved are quite unworried: the porn stars supposedly at risk of contracting a deadly incurable disease; the producers (some of them retired stars themselves) who hire them and would certainly be at considerable financial risk if an infected performer sued them for being obliged to perform without protection; and the officials of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation, whose co-founder is also a former star with 2000 films to her credit. All of them seem to understand the significance of actual evidence and experience, unlike the AIDS “activists” and official healthcare personnel whose knowledge comes not from experience but from indoctrination into HIV/AIDS dogma.
Darin Brown